Thinking Outside of the Box: 100 Years of Educational Psychology at TC

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Edward Lee Thorndike

Lisa Tsuei

Andrew Malinow

Brooke Stafford

It was thinking outside of the box that led Edward Lee Thorndike to focus his life's work on learning.

In
a series of "puzzlebox" experiments, Thorndike studied how animals
learn through trial and error, which leads to the "stamping in" of
correct responses. For example, he put a hungry cat in a box and gave
it food when it escaped. Gradually the animal learned what it had to do
to escape, as shown by the fact that the amount of time it took to
escape became shorter. In this type of learning, the connection between
the animal's situation and what it had to do to escape became stamped
into its mind.

While
working at TC, Thorndike applied these laws of associative learning to
humans and to the practice of education, which led to the first book in
Educational Psychology, called Educational Psychology in 1903. In this
book, he discusses the "law of effect," which says that rewarded
behaviors become more frequent. Over the years, he gradually he refined
this law, making it one of his most important principles of education.
He also challenged the educational doctrine of "formal discipline,"
which says that learning subjects like Latin will improve mental
muscles and make students better learners.

"Thorndike's
work is important because it put the study of learning and education on
a scientific footing for the first time," said James Corter, Chair of
the Human Development Department. Thorndike proposed that laws of
learning established by animal experiments might show us how to better
promote human learning.

Thorndike,
who worked at TC for most of his career, believed that instruction
should pursue specified, socially useful goals. In teacher training, he
emphasized attention, memory, habit, mental training, and most
importantly, experimental approaches to the study of learning and
instruction. By the beginning of the First World War, Thorndike's
accumulated work had succeeded in firmly establishing the field of
educational psychology as a distinct discipline within psychology.

"Thorndike's
profound influence was that he brought measurement to things that
people didn't measure before," said Ernst Rothkopf, the Cleveland E.
Dodge Professor Emeritus of Telecommunications and Education.
"Educational Psychology had a tiny beginning at TC that turned into an
explosive thing. Now, Educational Psychology departments are at most
major universities."

His
pioneer investigations in the fields of human and animal learning are
among the most influential in the history of psychology. In 1912,
Thorndike was recognized for his accomplishments and elected President
of the American Psychological Association. In 1934, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science elected Thorndike as the
only social scientist to head this professional organization. Though he
retired in 1939, he worked actively until his death 10 years later.

"Considered
the father of Educational Psychology, Edward Lee Thorndike was devoted
throughout his career to understanding the process of learning. His
interest in and contribution to our understanding of learning ranged
from studies with animals, children, and eventually with adults. With
the exception of animal studies, Thorndike's legacy continues at
Teachers College to this day in the form of a building named for him
and through graduate programs that focus on child development and
learning, adult learning, measurement and evaluation," said W. Warner
Burke, Edward Lee Thorndike Professor of Psychology and Education.

Educational
Psychology, now called "Cognitive Studies in Education" at Teachers
College, has evolved from a behaviorist approach in Thorndike's day to
a cognitive approach today. "Now, instead of talking about connecting
external stimuli and responses, we talk about cognitive mental
mechanisms," says John Black, the current Cleveland E. Dodge Professor
and the Coordinator of the Cognitive Studies Program "We use mental
models of mechanisms to improve performance and to design better
learning environments."

Today's
students have taken cognitive studies in education in different
directions, but all have the same goal-to understand how a person
learns and processes ideas. Some are developing educational technology
based on cognitive theories. Others are looking at how children
comprehend texts. Lately, there has been an upsurge of interest in this
department doubling the enrollment in the last three years.

Lisa
Tsuei, who is a doctoral student, was a science teacher in Seattle with
a psychology background before coming to TC. As a science teacher, she
saw that kids didn't have a good understanding of systems, so she
became interested in classroom technologies to create visual aids to
help with thinking about them.

To
help children understand complex processes, she is researching the use
of technology to support critical thinking and how the applications of
human information processes can be modeled in computers.

The
first phase of her study, inspired by a NASA-sponsored contest,
involved getting middle school students to figure out what they would
bring to a space station on Mars. The students said they would bring a
dog or an oxygen tank, but almost none of them thought to bring items
to create a system that would actually sustain life there, such as a
tree that produces oxygen. Tsuei found that important connections were
missing.

In
the next phase of the study, the children will be asked to design a
colony again. Through graphic representation and learning through
causal relations, she hopes the children will think more about how and
why rather than what. To help kids create the mental models of systems,
they are using a piece of educational software that is already being
used in schools.

"It
is my hope that students can connect information on their own and
understand that a system requires multiple variables and things that
work together," said Tsuei. "The children are at an age where this type
of thinking will be new, but it will be beneficial to all students at
any level. They can use it throughout their educational careers."

Another
doctoral student, Andrew Malinow, is working on designing software to
help teachers in the classroom, specifically in mathematics. He has
designed a program that helps teachers teach word problems with
proportions. It gives students concrete visualizations of the abstract
word problem and teaches them how to think that way themselves.

"Though
it was originally intended as a tutor, it is much more powerful with a
teacher there," said Malinow. "You can't replace a teacher's skills and
strengths with a computer, nor should a computer be asked to."

Just
as Thorndike was interested in theories of learning in reading, Joanna
Williams, Professor of Psychology and Education, researches text
comprehension, beginning reading, and students with learning
disabilities and other at-risk students.

Williams
along with other researchers, including doctoral student Brooke
Stafford, are looking at how children, including those with
disabilities, comprehend expository or informational text.

The
instructional program that they developed emphasizes text structure as
well as content, rather than content alone, as traditional instruction
does. They focused on one expository structure: compare and contrast.
Using animal classification for the program content, they selected five
animals as typical examples of the five classes. With trade books, an
animal encyclopedia and specially written short texts, they provided
clear examples of the expository text they were teaching.

At
the end of the nine lessons taught in 15 sessions, they interviewed the
second grade students individually and found out that they were able to
learn the three strategies they taught them: clue words, graphic
organizer and questions. And, the children also improved in the ability
to apply what they learned to new texts.

"This
program goes beyond reading comprehension, but that's where the direct
benefits are. We are trying to figure out the best ways to organize and
present information to children with the hope that these programs will
influence the way textbooks are written for students," said Stafford.
"And I am hoping this research will inform how we present knowledge to
them, not just in books, but also in other arenas such as television
and presentations."

When
Thorndike wrote his book on Educational Psychology one hundred years
ago, he probably never dreamed of all the ways the field would grow.
Based on the research of the current and past TC students and faculty
members in educational psychology, the program has a bright future as
they continue to think outside as well as inside the boxes-educational
technology and computers.